LAUSR

Objective To prepare porous silicon microparticles by electrochemical etching process and study telmisartan loading and release kinetics to develop controlled drug delivery system. Method A 50 mA/cm 2 of current density was applied for 180 s in HF:ethanol (2:4) solution for the etching of silicon wafer. The silicon film was fractured by probe sonication at 20 kHz of frequency and 750 W powers for 120 s to make the micro-sized particles. Drug-loading was carried out by taking 1 M sodium hydroxides solution and in vitro release of telmisartan was investigated using various models, such as zero order, first order, Hixson Crowell, Korsmeyer-Peppas, and Higuchi diffusion model. Results A telmisartan loaded native porous silicon microparticles (TEL-PSi) allowed a very high drug loading up to 58.39 micrograms as compared to telmisartan loaded thermally oxidized porous silicon (TEL-TOPSi) (28.14 micrograms). TEL-TOPSi showed controlled release as compare to TEL-PSi. The release rate of TEL-TOPSi and TEL-PSi was 47% and 77% after 5 h respectively. The Korsmeyer-Peppas model was selected based on its excellent fitting to the release data among all models and indicates diffusion-based release. Conclusion Telmisartan loading and its release kinetics was studied successfully on porous silicon micro particles. TEL-TOPSi micro particles can be used for controlled drug delivery system for poorly water-soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients.